When introductions were done, one of Frollo’s lackeys led us out of the room. Tex Mex and I followed in the rear, and with us was the guy who had been sitting in the back.
“Well well well, I expected to be the only one here from the Gray District.”
“We’re as surprised as you are,” Tex told him.
“You guys are going to help me teach these shiner assholes a lesson, right? We need to take them down a peg.”
“Yeah...sure,” I told him, half-heartedly. As I started to look around at this nice clean building and think more about what Tex and I had could gain from staying here, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to risk missing out on hot food, a warm bed and a free education.
“Your name is Thomas, right?” Tex asked him.
“Thomas Byrd, but I go by Byrd. And you're Tex and Scott?”
"Guilty as charged."
We all found our way into the lobby, where the Men of the Temple had set up a bulletin board. On it was a poster with some kind of symbol and an “O”.
“We were thinking this might be a good name for our new group,” said Father Michael. “We wanted it to be something intelligent and catchy, and this is what we came up with; The Infinite Zeros!”
“Motherfucker, that’s the worst name I’ve ever heard,” said somebody that I wanted to give a pat on the back.
Byrd stepped up to the poster. Without saying anything he took the tacks out of the corners, pulled down the poster and ripped it right in half.
“What are you doing?!” Father Michael said, horrified, but Byrd quickly put the two halves back up on the board with the infinity sign turned sideways.
“Here is a much better name for a group representing a district covered in neon lights with an abhorrent fashion sense, The 80's.”
Chapter 05 - Nathaniel Clark
“Now children, what do you most need to remember?”
“Everyone should practice tolerance,” we said, like robots. How long could she keep us here? There had to be some kind of law against having your class be this boring. We were just going over stuff we had learned two years ago, back in second grade.
“Emily, will you please come up front?”
I wanted to puke. Emily just sucked. I hated her. I made a face at her when she walked by. She made one back. It made me hate her more.
“What do you need, Mrs. Clements?”
“You’re so sweet. Emily, will you please tell us the correct names of the two different races of humans?”
“Why yes, Mrs. Clements. In order of importance, they are Homo Omniscients and Homo Sapiens.”
“Very good, Emily. You can sit down now.”
She made a face at me on the way to her seat. Something in my chest felt like it jumped and I almost smiled. I hated her so much.
“Can someone else come up and tell us about how the racial divide came to be? Anyone? How about you, Nathan?” She pointed right at me. I shook my head no, but she pulled me to the front of the room anyway.
“Tell us what you know about the history of the racial divide.”
I couldn’t remember, so I stood there until Mrs. Clements gave me a book with an open page and said, “Just read what it says here.”
“Jamestown was founded after the outbreak of Lykan’s Virus.” I read aloud. “The outbreak deci… decimu…”
“Decimated.”
“...decimated the population of the world, killing many and turning the rest into strange creatures. To combat the virus, a vaccine was created. Those who received the vaccine evolved into an advanced race of humans, now called Homo Omniscients.”
“Very good. You can sit down now, Nathan.”
I got back to my desk as fast as I could.
“Ms. Clements?”
“Yes, Bobby?”
“Why can’t we just say shiners? That’s what we are right?” Everyone chuckled.
“Because you are much too educated to use words like that. We are Homo Omniscients. Calling yourself anything less is an insult. Now class, Homo Omniscients and Homo Sapiens are easily distinguishable by factors other than just where we live. We know that it’s mostly Homo Omniscients that inhabit the Shining Ring, while Homo Sapiens live in the Cages. How does a Homo Sapien look different from you or me physically? Anyone?”
“My daddy says that Omniscients are the only real humans,” said a kid in the back.
“Oh really? And what does that make everyone else?” Ms. Clements asked him.
“He says they’re danks!” I laughed so hard when he said that. Everyone did. We all knew you weren’t supposed to say that in class.
“Now John, that’s not very kind of you. Remember that we are never to use that word in polite conversation. What you say at home is your business, but here in school we do not say bad things about the inferior race.”
“But that’s why they live in the Cages. It’s cause they’re infer… infer… it's ‘cause they suck!”
“John, you need to sit down and be quiet right now! Understood?”
“Yes, Mrs. Clements,” he said.
“Now, it’s about lunchtime anyway, so you kids head out and come back in a bit. We’ll continue the lesson when you return.”
Chapter 06 - Paige Wilson
“I just don’t see why things need to change.”
“No, I think you do,” I said, getting angrier and angrier by the minute.
“Madam President, the Homo Sapiens have lived in the Cages for a very long time. Letting them out could be damaging to them.”
“There is no evidence of that. In fact, Mr. Rusk, you yourself are a Sapien who lives outside the Cages. The fact that you are here proves that that statement is wrong.”
“Well,” the fat bastard said, as he paused to think and take a bite out of his third pastry. “They wouldn’t have anywhere to live. They’ll be reduced to nothing but street urchins, just like those parasites in the Sunset District; the ones you always see begging for change. I’ll bet you never considered that.”
It took every ounce of willpower I had not to strangle him. “I did consider that. In fact, I considered it more than a year ago. If you had helped me pass my Improved Housing Act, that issue could have been avoided entirely, and the Sapiens, Omniscients and even the beggars would have places to live.”
“Oh, uh… Well, maybe Madam President… maybe you should be careful before you continue your argument here.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, are you sure you aren’t… emotionally unstable… at this time…”
“I’m trying very hard to be patient here, Mr. Rusk. Please don’t give me a reason to lose my temper.”
Before that idiot could say anything else, his associate placed a hand on his shoulder and spoke for him. “All Boris is trying to say is that the citizens living in the Cages should simply stay where they are. That would be best for everyone.”
“I don’t agree with that. Ever since I became President, I’ve worked to get the Cages eradicated. My goal is to create a more unified Jamestown.”
“But, we both know that the backlash against the government increases with every Homo Sapien allowed to enter the Ring. Homo Omniscients don’t want the Sapiens living near them, and the Homo Sapiens don’t trust the government. This campaign of yours will do more harm than good.”
My shoulders slumped. Based on how my efforts had turned out so far, I couldn’t say he was wrong. “I’m trying to do what’s best for them.”
“The people don’t want what’s best. They want a quick fix in simple terms. Perhaps you should look to other solutions, should they present themselves. This meeting is over.”
I kept up my professional facade, until the doors swung closed behind them. I’d never felt so defeated. If it had just been Boris, maybe I could have bullied him into making progress, but that associate of his was much tougher, and his eerie blue eyes were haunting. I'd never seen that color in a human eye before.
“Why did I ever want this job?” I asked myself out lo
ud.
I opened up a fridge by my desk, pulled out a cold towel and slung it over my forehead. I let it sag down over my eyes as the heat finally started to abate.
Boris Rusk was the Elected Official in charge of the Cages. He had been for almost eight years now, but the only reason he got the job was because he had been appointed by his brother, Camden, just before he disappeared. Ironically, there hadn’t been an election in many years, and sometimes it felt like I was the only person in the whole damn Shining Ring who saw that as a travesty.
I took the towel off when condensation started running down my face. I stepped over to the sink to wring it out and noticed how loud my footsteps were in the large, empty office.
“It’s better this way. I like being alone.”
Saying it out loud didn’t make it any more believable.
“Why do you try so hard to fool yourself? Just because you’re the President doesn’t mean you can’t have friends and a family.”
“Actually, it does,” I said while putting on another towel, desperate to cool down my head.
“Oh I forgot, you’re the President first and a woman second.”
“And you’re an ass first and nothing second.”
My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. “Madam President, I just saw Mr. Rusk leave. Would you like your usual brandy?”
“Yes, thank you. And two glasses.”
“Are you inviting someone else?”
I started to correct him, before I remembered that I was the only other person in the room.
“Sorry, I’m not sure where my mind is at today. Just a single glass, as usual.”
“Right away, ma’am.”
“I’m the only person here,” I said to myself once the door was shut. “I have too much on my plate to waste time talking to myself.”
“I’m insulted by that,” Fischer said. “How can you consider me a waste of time?”
“Madam President,” one of my bodyguards said, opening up the door and walking in with a tray. “Here is your usual, along with some ice water.”
“Thank you so much.”
“It’s no problem at all. Oh, and before I forget; due to his excellent performance in school, your nephew is being bumped up a grade level. His nanny wanted me to tell you right away.”
“Tell him I’m very proud of him.”
“I will. Goodnight, ma’am.”
“Goodnight.”
“And the pile of regrets just keeps getting bigger,” he said as soon as the door closed.
“I’m far too busy to be raising a child. You know that.”
“Well, I’m a figment of your imagination, so if I don’t believe that, then you obviously don’t.”
“He shouldn’t be around the people I deal with on a day to day basis.”
“Like Boris? Oh please, he’s harmless and dumb as a rock.”
I stared down at my desk. I’d been clutching those excuses for the last eight years. Did I know how thin they were all along?
“They say this is a very important time in a woman’s life. Now that certain doors are closed to her she may start to regret her past decisions. She may think about what she could have done differently, or even become a little… imbalanced.”
“I may have regrets, but there is nothing imbalanced about me. I’m just…
“I can see the tagline now; The lonely President Paige Wilson, 48 years old and having no family or friends, is haunted by the ghost of her dead husband. The archivists will have a field day when they’re compiling your life story.”
I poured out a rather large glass of my special post-idiot brandy and chugged it like cheap beer. “I really need to stop talking to myself.”
“Who else do you have to talk to?”
I had another drink, this time so I could forget the truth behind that last statement.
“Can I try some?”
I looked up from my glass and didn’t see my ex-husband sitting there ready to judge me. Instead, I saw James Fischer Jr. at fifteen years old, stealing booze from the liquor cabinet at his house to impress me.
I refilled the glass and sat it on the desk for him. “Knock yourself out.”
It was funny to imagine his face contorting at the horrible taste and to remember how I did the same thing after drinking for the first time.
“God, that’s terrible.”
“It gets better with age,” I said, and then polished it off. “Come with me.”
I went up to the roof of the building; the tallest in the entire city. It had the best view for miles around. When we were kids, we must have snuck up there a hundred times.
The Cages were off in the distance. I could see the cloud of red dust that always hung over it, and faintly hear the drumbeat that always pumped out of the sound system. The five short streets were lined up, in parallel, with steel bars keeping anyone from leaving, or even interacting with people in the other blocks. A pit formed in my stomach, as I looked at them. Even though the metal still looked clean and new, it didn't change how ugly and crude they looked to me, when I thought about the people locked inside.
To the left was the Gray District. Two tall metal walls, built on the sides of a freeway overpass. Houses made of sheet metal and scrap materials were built into the walls, and connected to one another with rickety stairs and catwalks. The almost completely vertical district was the first place people settled after Lykan’s Virus turned much of the population turned into monsters, and it was quite an impressive piece of apocalyptic architecture.
When people eventually started moving off the overpass, they built a stone and metal wall around the city to protect themselves from the creatures in the forest, and, when the population increased in size, they expanded it. They did so several times, the most recent one being the extension to make room for the Cages, that turned the, originally, circular Jamestown into a keyhole shape.
The Presidential District was right below us. It was the smallest of the four, really just a collection of government buildings and brownstone apartments, built right alongside the overpass, long before this place came to be known as Jamestown. An enormous underground farming facility was built underneath, which was where all Jamestown’s food came from. One of the reasons the founders had built the wall was to protect this valuable resource from the monsters outside.
Finally, the Sunset District was to the right, glowing as it always did. Construction on this District had only been finished shortly before the Cages, and it was built to show just how far Jamestown had come since the outbreak. My father had green-lit it’s construction, and seemed to spend all his time there, during his later years. I, on the other hand, had always found it unnerving. Maybe it was because of the neon lights that traced every building, or maybe it was the architecture. However, more than likely, it was because the Sunset District was where the Men of the Temple were based; those creepy, cultish bastards terrified me, and I had heard a lot of rumors about the mysterious man they had entrusted to keep the neon lights running.
“Do you remember this place?” I asked Fischer. “The rooftop?”
“Of course. We always used to come up here when we were kids. We had to sneak past the guards because your dad was afraid we’d fall over the edge.”
“Oh yeah, I lied to you about that. The truth is my dad was afraid that if we kept sneaking off I would end up pregnant.”
“Really?” He laughed, but then he looked sad again. “How different do you think our lives would be if that had happened? Do you think we’d still be married if we had had kids?”
“Having a child wouldn’t have stopped you from cheating on me.”
“You never know.”
“No, I do know. You were determined never to grow up, but I had bigger issues to deal with. You were off partying, while I tried to save the city that I love. That’s why things had to work out this way.”
I’d been holding that inside for a very long time, but when I looked over, he was gone. In his place were two teenage
rs, head over heels in love with each other, stretching out their arms and pretending they could fly as the wind blew through their arms.
Then I saw the entire brass section of the Presidential Orchestra, which Fischer was forced to be a part of when he was eighteen. God, he hated playing the trumpet and that awful suit he had to wear.
And then there were the dozens of times we snuck out together; that mailbox we smashed and the tram we took for a joyride; a negative pregnancy test making us jump for joy at seventeen and cry at thirty-four.
And finally, I saw where I was right now; a bitter woman starting menopause, still holding on to all the anger and hatred she’d accumulated over the last forty-eight years; the leader of a city, and spokesman for almost two thousand people, spending her nights sitting on an empty rooftop, alone.
Chapter 07 - Geoffrey Klein
“Counselor Geoffrey, how come we can’t go camping outside the walls?”
“Because you get eaten if you go outside,” said another camper.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, you do. If you leave the city you die.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is. If you leave the city you’ll get eaten by giant dogs. Isn’t that right Counselor Geoffrey?”
They looked at me. I didn’t like it when people looked at me. “Uh, kids… let’s not, uh… I don’t think… Let’s go over our packets again. Now, if you ever need to find food in the wild-”
“No, Counselor Geoffrey! We want to know about the giant dogs!”
“Yeah, tell us about the dogs!”
“TELL US ABOUT THE DOGS!”
Oh, fudge. I didn’t think I’d have to be the one to talk to these kids about this subject. Well, somebody would have to tell them sooner or later.
I sighed. “Alright kids, gather round. Do any of you know exactly how Jamestown was founded?”
“It was by Omniscients! They built walls to keep out the dog people outside.”
Black Light: The Deplorable Savior Page 2
